The guy’s in an impossible position, between conservative classical fans and market-led demands for a more popular approach. One says: “how dare you play that pop classic rubbish”, the other: “how dare you play that tuneless modern rubbish”. But both of those miss why Radio 3 is important.

The charge laid against classical music is usually that it’s elitist, but that’s doesn’t apply to Radio 3. It costs you nothing to listen to full-length works, that’s equality of access to anyone with a radio. Curious about the appeal of Wagner, Stockhausen, Beethoven but can’t afford to buy? Catch Radio 3 at the right time and you can satisfy your ears. That’s what is important about Radio 3 and it doesn’t apply only to “classical” but also “difficult” (i.e. pretty wild) modern composition, jazz of various stripes, “world” (yuk) music (a multitude of sins, some very pleasurable) and most everything else.

You hear things on Radio 3 that would never get near a commercial radio station and that’s what people who love music should value above all else, whether it’s their thing or not. We don’t have John Peel any more and you can’t stumble upon musical genius online. What we can do is celebrate radio stations that still have space for music for its own sake. Give Radio 3 the credit it deserves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh1yY-QrRiw

Proof that Brian Jonestown Massacre aren’t the only band in LA still livin’ like it’s 1968, here are The Quarter After, who have just released their second album Changes Near. Yes, yes, you’ve heard this sound before, many times. But is anything really new any more? And isn’t it the case that there’s something about the jangling, hazy West Coast psychedelic sounds of bands like Buffalo Springfield and The Byrds that will never cease to please, especially when it’s pulled off with this degree of finesse and authenticity? Changes Near takes its lead from those bands, and mixes in a heady cloud of mid-period Ride squall, which for me brings it out in front of sheeny mid-80s psych revivalists like Rain Parade or Plasticland into a stranger, darker place - and psychedelia always works better with an undercurrent of anxiety. Not that this is a hellish trip - anything but. The darkness is balanced with twangy country-style jaunts, and as a whole the album is good enough to be more than the sum of its influences. It’s an album that could only, realistically, have come out of LA. Pass the patchouli.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157594212951999/

and did some limited prints of some of the illustrations I’ve done for Plan B.

Slight price increase to £5 each for the posters or any 3 for £12 (Plus postage)

Anyway, you can go purchase Acid Logic: A Decade of Humorous Writing on Pop Culture, Trash Cinema and Rebel Music on Amazon for remarkably cheap prices so get on it. Hopefully some of Wil’s columns will make it into the exciting diskant 10 year FUN we are currently planning. More news on that SOON.

In Standard Grade English classes, we had to put together a portfolio of creative writing. All the teenage boys included a story set in the future with an introduction that talked about the present but written in the past tense. I was amazed, on picking up this well-reviewed French literary sensation, to find that it began with the exact same “trick”. How come when we did it was clumsy and adolescent but this guy was acclaimed for his stylistic conceit?

But his work is thoroughly adolescent. Consider the novel’s main features: a relentless nihilism and a contempt for women based on almost complete ignorance of them as people. I don’t anyone who hasn’t grown out of that. (But then the number of successful novelists I know is low…)

Your man makes a fortune from middle-aged, middle-class angst on the back of a generalised backlash against feminism, sexual liberation and other concrete gains of the 1960s. Goes on to cement his reactionary politics and market niche by fulminating against Islam (this turns out to also be a way of lashing out at his mother).

In summary, Houellebecq’s book is good for nothing but wallowing in masturbatory self-loathing; his celebrity was his fortunate tapping into now-rising political trends; and a plague on all middle-aged, middle-class Brit lit-critics for fawning over poorly-written reactionary bile with the appearance of daring.

40 years after the near-revolution of May 68 we have an entrenched liberal elite repainting the Paris evenements (’scuse spelling) as being solely about sex (cf. The Dreamers) versus a reactionary right happy to take advantage of the social gains while snarling (a la Sarkozy) about it being the source of all evil in the world.

I’m with the Situationists on this one. All power to the imagination!

The task of the various branches of knowledge that are in the process of developing spectacular thought is to justify an unjustifable society and to establish a general science of false consciousness. This thought is totally conditioned by the fact that it cannot recognise, and does not want to recognise, its own material dependence on the spectacular system.

*If you’re under 18 you can’t even LOOK at the website, lest you be driven to underage drinking. Let alone go to any of the gigs. Exactly why is sponsorship of live music by makers of alcohol a good thing?

Toots & The Maytals - Pressure Drop

Althea & Donna - Uptown Top Ranking

Dave & Ansel Collins - Double Barrel

The Meters - Cissy Strut

Talking Heads -  Once In A Lifetime

ZZ Top - Snappy Kakkie

Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy (Electric Mud version)

John Lee Hooker - I’m Leaving

Bo Diddley - Hey! Bo Diddley (live)

Koko Taylor - Wang Dang Doodle

Blind Faith - Had To Cry Today

Dr John - Gris Gris Gumbo Ya Ya

From a corporate eyeball whore point-of-view, they were there first. Other overpriced pint-size poisoners are still playing catch-up in Glasgow. Fair play for that.

Musically, though, they were always second, never innovating. As soon as any independent promoters demonstrated a musical appetite, there’d be Tenants the next year with a less adventurous music bill and much increased ticket price.

Case 1: Planet Pop in August in Edinburgh. After years of the Edinburgh Festival as a musical desert, Planet Pop brought a full bill of indie goodness to scuzzy venues like the Cas Rock and some legendary gigs were had. The Fall in a bar the size of your living room. Sleater-Kinney and Prolapse: were they on the same bill? I can’t remember, but I know they were the best show I’d seen up to that time.

Then what? Tenants think “ooh we’ll have some of that” and bring us T on the Fringe. More mainstream acts, with a nod towards “indie” tastes and a trebling of ticket prices. Cue lots of publicity claiming that there had been no music before Tenants and PlanetPop is written out of music history.

Case 2: Le Weekend in Stirling launches with a proper avant-garde line-up, in the 2nd half of April. That’ll never work. Oh, it did? Here comes Triptych. Less of the avant-garde though, let’s go for hipster. What are young “creatives” listening to? Ticket prices leap again. Beer company praised for innovation and bringing music to cities that never had it so good. Like, er Glasgow. Stuart B of Mogwai takes the piss out of Tenants onstage at STAR, finds himself the subject of a peeved letter from a Tenant PR hack for his ingratitude. (As we know, no-one knew who Mogwai were before Tenants gave them a gig).

It goes on. T-Break. Tenants invents the battle of the bands. Like  X-Factor, but your prize is to be bottled off of a foot-high stage in a derelict army base at the arse-end of Scotland. In front of your schoolmates.

T in the Park! Tenants invents the music festival. Let’s take 50,000 Scots out of their cities to get shit-faced, bleary-eyed and aggresive in the countryside. Take our Buckfast away at the gate, make us drink Tenants at £3 a pint. Like Glasgow Green without the fresh air and sense of space.

It’s all about market segmentation and demographics. T in the Park is your buy-it-by-the-crate lager and Triptych was their attempt to launch an upmarket “aspirational” brand. They actually did use Triptych to launch a new beer but I’m buggered if I can remember what it was called. Epic Fail.

…and coincidentally, the next year, Triptych is canned. Funny that.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommm_sykes/2436782237/

http://www.myspace.com/summerlin 

Meh I always fall for this kind of commercial website flame baiting. Use the AdBlock firefox extension if you follow that link.

What WE Provide!
Butlins Minehead looks out across a superb sandy beach. The site not only has a supermarket, newsagent and cash points, it also has Burger King, Pizza Hut, Finnegan’s fish and chips, Sun and Moon, Skyline Cafe and Yacht Club Dining room. Onsite facilities include a cinema, Splash Water World - a sub-tropical environment that has a huge wave pool, a swimming pool, 3 flumes and also a flume based raft ride - Ten-pin bowling and amusement arcade. Sports include Archery, Football, Basketball, Darts, Petanque, Fencing, Kwik Cricket, Netball, Rounders, Table Tennis, Outdoor Bowls and Crazy Golf.

Meal Deals:
For those of you who have purchased room only accommodation or don’t feel like cooking over the weekend Butlins have put together a breakfast and dinner package at £34.95.

What you get: Full Traditional English Breakfast, Continental Style Breakfast Buffet, Selection of Cereals and Pastries, Fruit, Toast and Tea, Coffee and Fruit Juices. 3 Course Dinner, served buffet style, including Soup, Hot Buffet, Salad Bar, Desserts and Ice Cream, with Hot Drinks and Juices

Amazing. They don’t even brag about the widescreen TVs, framed pictures, complimentary Butlins chocolate and pyramid of single serving milk either.

So, who else is going to Butlins?

* The legendary Creation compilation Doing It For The Kids has inspired a new 3CD charity compilation which features such Creation luminaries ex-Jasmine Minks members, Ed Ball, and um, one of Hurricane #1. There are also tracks by the likes of Ballboy, Popup, de Rosa and The Orchids. There are only 266 actual copies available, which will be individually auctioned for Yorkhill Children’s Hospital in Glasgow. You can also download the whole thing here for just £6.49 with all proceeds going to charity. Find out more at www.myspace.com/yorkhillproject

* Roger from the on-hiatus Dawn Of The Replicants has set up “a shabby DIY label type of a thing” called Shark Batter with his brother and are releasing a bunch of new things soon including his new band TheStarkPalace, The Stone Ghost Collective and Vacuum Spasm Babies. Have a listen and find out more at www.myspace.com/sharkbatterrecords

* Beginning your email, “Dear Fierce Terrifying Force” is one way to get my attention. Tom Braham is from Southampton and does aa “free weekly show of nit-wit fun and the best bands live in session” by podcast Not sure about “best” but they are certainly big-ish names like I Am Kloot and Six Nation State. Have a listen here.

* It seems to be down just now but hopefully that’s just a blip. wikimobileactunsigned.com is a wiki “for local band scenes across the UK to create and maintain a local directory of useful stuff in their area. Everything from record labels, studios, local papers and radio, gig venues, cd duplication places, t-shirt printing places, etc etc.”  Good idea if people find some time to help out.

That’s all for now.

Foreigners might be unfamiliar with the laughable Scotland with style rebranding / gentrification campaign underway here, much to the amusement of your actual Glaswegians. A black & white photo campaign, much vapid posturing and no recognisable link to everyday life, it’s the public face of an attempt to remake the city as a short-break / conference destination. Thus we have litter wardens dressed as police, sub-Bladerunner video advertising and bouncers repelling the goths from steps at the back of a famous bookchain. A nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there.

What The Caravan Gallery have done with their garish and glossy Glasgow - It’s so stylish! is skewer those pretensions quite nicely while at the same time celebrating a more “authentic” (yuk) Glaswegian style. Instead of dribbling on about modern architecture they say “Glasgow has a lot of different buildings”, under a photo of the Norfolk St flats and the accompanying slum-clearance survivor. Not pretty but very Glasgow.

The whole thing could have been just a bitter joke but there’s a sense of affection for the people of Glasgow. No resort to the easy neds-&-knives clichés, the targets of the satire are them as need their pretensions punctured: “A dead conifer adds the finishing touch to this ‘aspirational lifestyle’ balcony” of 1.5 square metres. While at the same time, they’ve picked out the scruffy, unashamed but under threat areas like Paddy’s Market: “This is not ordinary soup, this is Hell’s Kitchen soup”.

Try and get hold of a copy (maybe from these guys), it’ll tell you more about Glasgow than a hundred billboards or gritty exposés.

(yesyes, there are still many untitled and uncategorised posts back there. I’m not quite that bored, yet.)

I put a load up today that have been clogging up my hard drive:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157604455376098/

Obviously it’ll bury Flickr under the weight of German Fetish Porn in about a fortnight but it’s a good idea nonetheless.

Why should you care? Read on…

I hate most nightclubs. The beer stinks, the price is excessive and in some venues the crowd cares more about posing than dancing (I’m looking at you, Optimo).

But the Soundhaus is different. There’s plenty of unpromising things about it. It’s just a warehouse, miles out of the way of pubs, crowds or anything in the shadow of the motorway. One time I took the shortcut across the Clydeside Expressway, twisted my ankle and limped around the whole night but still had a good time.

You have to really want to go there and I that’s its strength. The crowd that it gets in there are there for a reason and it’s to have a good time, making the Soundhaus the most unpretentious, wanker-free nightclub in Glasgow.

The Saturday night has DJs from Monox, Inner City Acid, Chakra, Pussypower and more, the night runs from 10:30-4:30 and costs just £6/£8. (Although a little birdie told me that those arriving at 10 get free entry and free beer…)

That’s enough promo. I feel dirty (but they didn’t pay me for this and it’s all true as far as I know…)

There you go, couldn’t rename the tracks as it keeps telling me there’s an error so here’s the tracklisting:

• Neil Young - Cinnamon Girl
• Jimi Hendrix Experience - Killing Floor (live)
• The Sonics - Have Love, Will Travel
• Oneida - Doin Business In Japan
• MC5 - Looking At You
• Ike & Tina Turner - Untitled
• Yardbirds - Stroll On
• Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Diddy wah diddy
• Sebadoh - Flame
• The Elastik Band - Spazz
• The Buffalo Springfield - Mr. Soul
• Howlin’ Wolf - Wang Dang Doodle

Since there were clear notices all over diskant announcing that we were not accepting new review material, I don’t feel any guilt in throwing out everything that is currently sitting in the box, unlistened to and unreviewed. It’s possible I might find some time to dig out anything that looks any good. Don’t hold your breath though.

Anything sent to me, unsolicited, will now be binned immediately. Please follow the new guidelines. If you want to strike diskant off your promo list, I will not blame you in the least. However, it is helping nobody for me to have a crate of dusty ignored CDs in my front room. Thank you.